pitiable little heaps of clothes, red or blue or grey, that once were men, that helped to make this tragedy and fell its victims. Most of them had been buried and hidden away in the shelter of the earth. But here and there they were still lying, sometimes prone on their faces as they fell, more often carefully laid on their backs, staring up at the sky with unseeing eyes. Some looked peaceful and at rest. Others had suffered horribly before they died, and their coal-black faces were twisted and drawn, and their outstretched arms and hands clutched at emptiness in an agony of intolerable pain. The three weeks’ battle was now well under way. On the first day the opening rush of the German attack had spent itself in vain against the French right wing south of the Meurthe. The fire of Morhange had done its work. It had forged a tough line of Ironsides, which the Bavarian corps could neither bend nor break, and during the night they began to fall back toward the Mortagne leaving masses of dead behind them. A French cavalry patrol, sent out early on the morning of the 15th along the Bayon-Lunéville road to reconnoitre, got as far as Lamath, on the left bank of the river, before they found the enemy. During the day the village was gallantly carried by a battalion of Chasseurs-Alpins. Further south, in the triangle beyond the road and the forest of Vacquenat, the enemy held on more persistently to the ground which they had gained, and on the 25th and 26th at Einvaux, Clayeures, Réménoville, Rozelieures and other villages between the two rivers they were only driven back step by step as the result of most determined and gallant efforts on the part of the French. The loss of life on both sides was very great. A little stream which flows through Réménoville into the Mortagne was so choked with dead that the cavalry found it impossible to water their horses in it. All over the field of battle, especially in the woods, the air was tainted with the smell of putrefying bodies. But death and wounds had no effect on the morale of the two French Army Corps. Now that they had made their stand they were irresistible. They were constantly attacking instead of being attacked, and retreat was everywhere turned into advance. At the same time the chief weight of the German counter-attack—for though they were retiring they were always trying to make ground—was gradually shifted southwards away from the Bayon road towards Gerbéviller and Moyen, higher up the river, probably in the hope of breaking through between the XVth corps and the First Army on their right. But no breach was made. On the 27th a Colonial Regiment was fighting a little to the west of the martyred town. They had suffered severely and had lost two colonels since the 24th. A third came to join them, reported himself to the brigadier, rode forward towards his men and was knocked over and killed by a shell before he had been ten minutes in command. But still his men and all the other